Kalīla wa-Dimna is a layered collection of animal fables whose celebrated Arabic recension is associated with ʿAbd Allāh ibn al-Muqaffaʿ (Classical/literary, eighth century). Its narrators repeatedly place one story inside another: a king asks for an example, a philosopher supplies a fable, and a character within that fable may tell yet another tale. The grammar therefore does more than report events; it continually tells the reader who currently holds the narrative floor.
The inherited constructions remain readable, but their present-day register varies; Classical Residue in Contemporary Prose provides the broader diagnostic.
The brief passage below comes from “The Monkey and the Carpenter,” embedded in “The Lion and the Ox.” The underlying work is public domain, and the wording follows the Hindawi digital edition of “The Lion and the Ox”, edited by ʿAbd al-Wahhāb ʿAzzām and Ṭāhā Ḥusayn. Hindawi’s book record says that edition is available under a legal agreement with Ṭāhā Ḥusayn’s family, so this page uses only a brief attributed excerpt. Optional vowel marks have been removed and terminal punctuation supplied; no wording inside the displayed excerpt has been modernized. The translation is original to this page.
The attributed passage
قال كليلة: زعموا أن قردا رأى نجارا يشق خشبة على وتدين راكبا عليها كالأسوار على الفرس، وكلما شق منها ذراعا أدخل فيها وتدا.
Kalīla said: “They relate that a monkey saw a carpenter splitting a piece of wood on two supports, sitting astride it like a horseman on a horse; whenever he had split a cubit of it, he inserted a wedge into it.”
قال كليلة: زعموا أن قردا رأى نجارا يشق خشبة على وتدين راكبا عليها كالأسوار على الفرس، وكلما شق منها ذراعا أدخل فيها وتدا.
qāla kalīlatu: zaʿamū ʾanna qirdan raʾā najjāran yashuqqu khashabatan ʿalā watadayni rākiban ʿalayhā ka-l-ʾuswāri ʿalā l-faras, wa-kullamā shaqqa minhā dhirāʿan ʾadkhala fīhā watadan.
Kalīla said: ‘They relate that a monkey saw a carpenter splitting a piece of wood on two supports, sitting astride it like a horseman on a horse; whenever he had split a cubit of it, he inserted a wedge into it.’ (Classical/literary.)
This one sentence has three levels. قال كليلة belongs to the surrounding dialogue. زعموا opens the fable and invokes unnamed transmitters. Everything after أن is the reported world of the monkey and carpenter. English can imitate this structure with Kalīla said, “They say that...”, but contemporary English often suppresses the anonymous transmitter and begins Once there was. Classical Arabic keeps the transmission frame visible.
“They relate”: a conventional narrative source
زعموا أن قردا رأى نجارا.
zaʿamū ʾanna qirdan raʾā najjāran.
They relate that a monkey saw a carpenter. (Classical fable opening.)
The perfect verb زعموا has a grammatically plural but unexpressed subject: “they.” In this fable convention, it does not identify a particular group and need not imply the modern journalistic suspicion often conveyed by English they alleged. It functions as a traditional evidential frame: the narrator presents a received story rather than claiming eyewitness authority. أنّ then introduces its content. Its noun قردا is accusative, while the verbal clause رأى نجارا serves as its predicate.
The semantic history matters. In contemporary news, زعم المسؤول أن... often distances the writer from a disputed claim (formal/news). Here the anonymous plural is a genre marker (Classical/literary). Translating both mechanically as alleged would inject skepticism into the fable.
يروى أن قردا رأى نجارا يعمل في قطعة من الخشب.
yurwā ʾanna qirdan raʾā najjāran yaʿmalu fī qiṭʿatin mina l-khashab.
It is related that a monkey saw a carpenter working on a piece of wood. (Contemporary formal retelling.)
The passive يروى is a natural modern way to preserve hearsay without reviving the full older storyteller’s voice. A plainer adaptation can simply say رأى قرد.... Modernization is therefore a choice about stance, not a word-for-word substitution.
One perception verb, two simultaneous actions
رأى قردا يشق خشبة.
raʾā qirdan yashuqqu khashabatan.
He saw a monkey splitting a piece of wood.
This deliberately altered sentence shows why endings and reference matter. قردا is the object of رأى, and the following imperfect يشق normally describes that object: the monkey is doing the splitting. In the source, however, رأى نجارا يشق خشبة makes نجارا the perceived participant and يشق خشبة the event observed. English similarly permits saw a carpenter splitting wood, but Arabic has no overt relative marker before يشق.
رأى القرد نجارا يشق خشبة.
raʾā l-qirdu najjāran yashuqqu khashabatan.
The monkey saw a carpenter splitting a piece of wood.
The source introduces the monkey as indefinite قردا inside the أنّ clause. A contemporary editor might prefer explicit القرد in a separate sentence once the animal has been introduced, but the original’s compact chain keeps the viewpoint moving without a reset.
A circumstantial phrase and a compact pronoun
راكبا عليها كالأسوار على الفرس.
rākiban ʿalayhā ka-l-ʾuswāri ʿalā l-faras.
Sitting astride it like a horseman on a horse. (Classical/literary circumstantial phrase.)
Accusative راكبا is a circumstantial expression whose understood subject is the carpenter. The feminine pronoun ـها resumes خشبة, while the explicit simile كالأسوار على الفرس confirms that he is astride the plank as a horseman sits on a horse. Morphology and imagery therefore resolve the compact reference together.
Even so, historical prose can demand more inference than a modern procedural text. راكب literally evokes riding, and the simile makes that image deliberate; with a plank it means sitting astride it. A contemporary workshop description would likely choose جالس عليها. The older wording is not “wrong MSA.” It is a lexical and stylistic choice whose collocation is less expected today.
كان النجار جالسا على قطعة الخشب.
kāna n-najjāru jālisan ʿalā qiṭʿati l-khashab.
The carpenter was sitting on the piece of wood. (Contemporary neutral description.)
كلما builds an iterative scene
كلما شق منها ذراعا أدخل فيها وتدا.
kullamā shaqqa minhā dhirāʿan ʾadkhala fīhā watadan.
Whenever he had split a cubit of it, he inserted a wedge into it.
كلما pairs a repeated condition with a repeated result. Both verbs are perfect—شق، أدخل—but the sequence is not a single completed pair. The particle distributes that perfective pair over successive stages of the work: split, insert; split, insert. English often uses whenever plus a past tense, or each time ... he would....
The two attached feminine pronouns again refer to خشبة: منها marks the material or extent from which the cubit is cut, and فيها marks the place receiving the wedge. ذراعا is an accusative measure expression, not the direct object naming the thing split; خشبة already filled that role earlier. وتدا is the direct object of causative Form IV أدخل “insert, cause to enter.”
The sentence’s long coordination is controlled, not loose. Each و adds a stage or concurrent circumstance, while كلما gives the last pair an internal repeated rhythm. Reading every و as a new independent English sentence loses the crafted accumulation.
A transparent contemporary modernization
يروى أن قردا رأى نجارا يشق قطعة من الخشب وهو جالس عليها.
yurwā ʾanna qirdan raʾā najjāran yashuqqu qiṭʿatan mina l-khashabi wa-huwa jālisun ʿalayhā.
It is related that a monkey saw a carpenter splitting a piece of wood while sitting on it. (Contemporary formal retelling.)
وكان النجار يضع وتدا في الشق كلما وسعه.
wa-kāna n-najjāru yaḍaʿu watadan fī sh-shaqqi kullamā wassaʿah.
The carpenter would put a wedge in the split whenever he widened it.
This is a faithful explanatory rewrite, not a replacement quotation. يروى retains the transmitted-story stance; قطعة من الخشب is more transparent than bare خشبة for many learners; جالس removes the older riding metaphor; and كان يضع makes repeated background action explicit. The rewrite also repeats النجار to reduce the processing load. What it loses is the original’s compact cadence and its traditional زعموا opening.
Common Mistakes
Treating زعموا as a named plural subject
❌ زعموا التجار أن القرد رأى نجارا.
Incorrect for the fable frame: زعموا already has an implicit plural subject, and no merchants have been introduced.
✅ زعموا أن قردا رأى نجارا يعمل في الخشب.
zaʿamū ʾanna qirdan raʾā najjāran yaʿmalu fī l-khashab.
They relate that a monkey saw a carpenter working in wood. (Traditional narrative frame.)
Making the noun after أنّ nominative
❌ زعموا أن قرد رأى النجار.
Incorrect in fully inflected reading: the noun of أنّ is accusative, قردا.
✅ يروى أن قردا راقب نجارا في ورشته.
yurwā ʾanna qirdan rāqaba najjāran fī warshatih.
It is related that a monkey watched a carpenter in his workshop.
Assigning عليها to a masculine antecedent
❌ الضمير في عليها يعود على النجار.
Incorrect analysis: the feminine pronoun ـها points to خشبة, not masculine النجار.
✅ كان النجار جالسا على الخشبة، ولذلك يعود الضمير عليها.
kāna n-najjāru jālisan ʿalā l-khashaba(h), wa-li-dhālika yaʿūdu ḍ-ḍamīru ʿalayhā.
The carpenter was sitting on the plank, so the pronoun ʿalayhā refers back to it.
Modernizing inside quotation marks without disclosure
❌ قال كليلة: يروى أن قردا رأى نجارا يقسم قطعة خشب.
Editorially misleading if presented as the source’s exact wording: this silently replaces زعموا and يشق خشبة.
✅ قال كليلة في النص القديم: زعموا؛ ويمكن أن نقول في صياغة معاصرة: يروى.
qāla kalīlatu fī n-naṣṣi l-qadīm: zaʿamū; wa-yumkinu ʾan naqūla fī ṣiyāghatin muʿāṣira(h): yurwā.
Kalīla says zaʿamū in the old text; in a contemporary reformulation we can say yurwā.
Key Takeaways
- قال كليلة → زعموا → أن... marks three layers of narrative responsibility.
- Perfect verbs after كلما describe a repeated sequence, not just one past event.
- Case, gender, and event logic jointly resolve the understood subject of راكبا and the referent of ـها.
- Historical wording can be grammatical but lexically or stylistically marked; label it instead of calling it defective.
- A modernization must remain visibly separate from the attributed quotation and should state what it clarifies and what rhetoric it loses.
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